W hen Somerset McCarty set out on the morning of Aug. 5 to meet a friend for coffee, he hadn't an inkling that he would die that day -- or live to tell the tale.

A heart stops

"I didn't have pain. I didn't feel dizzy," says McCarty, 37. "I was making a turn and looking at the clock (and then) I was falling asleep on a cloud. I saw angels surrounding me and welcoming me into heaven."

At Hillside Road and 17th Street, McCarty's car, in neutral, was partially on the shoulder. Bart McCoy drove by on his way to a business meeting.

"The Jeep was on the other side of the road. I looked back, and the gentleman was leaned back in his seat. It looked like he was napping. It was a summer day, warm, (the Jeep) open air. I assumed he was sleeping off a drunk."

But as he drove past, the sight nagged at him. An inner voice prodded at him.

"It said, 'Turn around. Something's not right,' " McCoy says.

He rolled down his window and spoke to the man. No response.

He got out of the car and saw that McCarty's skin was pale and bluish.

"He had no pulse and wasn't breathing," McCoy says.

Then things got worse.

"I was a ranch kid," McCoy says. "I was exposed to lots of things dying. There's a particular process dying people or a dying animal go through -- a death rattle. It looks like they're trying to breathe and they're not. He was going through that."

McCoy and a passing cyclist got McCarty out of the Jeep. They called 911 and McCoy began performing CPR.

As he worked, McCoy prayed.

"I'm a Christian," he says. "I believe everybody, if they're living and breathing has a mission, a purpose... As I was working on Somerset, (I said) 'God, if this individual has a mission, let him come back.' I told (McCarty) afterward that he had a mission."

Paramedics arrived and shocked McCarty's heart without result. Eventually, after two jolts from the defibrillator, a shot of epinephrine and a third shock, his heart began to beat.

The documented time (from the 911 call) that McCarty had no pulse was more than 13 minutes. The actual time is likely longer.

Hospital cooldown

Dr. Jamie Doucet, a cardiologist at Boulder Heart, who is affiliated with Boulder Community Hospital, first encountered McCarty in the hospital's emergency room. He was called to consult on the patient who was in a coma.

"He was unable to respond to questions or even withdraw from painful stimuli," Doucet says. "He was on a ventilator."

Doctors rushed McCarty to the cardiac lab to check for obstructions and heart damage. They found no problems.

Doucet says in rare cases, a person's heart will suddenly go into a chaotic rhythm.

However, he adds, "To present with sudden cardiac death and no evidence of obstruction ... I'd say it's unusual, way less than 5 percent of the time."

Doctors also checked McCarty's lungs for evidence of a clot, but found nothing.

Doucet and hospital staff started cooling down McCarty's temperature as is the protocol.

"We were trying to get his temperature down to avoid swelling of the brain and the effects of damage on tissues," Doucet says.

The question then became whether McCarty's brain would recover. Doucet says previous practice was to warm people who had experienced cardiac arrest.

"Before we used the hypothermia, if someone died outside the hospital, the chances of having a meaningful neurological recovery would be about 7 percent," he says. With hypothermic treatment, the chance jumps to about 50 percent. Boulder Community has been using the protocol about 12 years, Doucet says.

'Welcome, welcome'

McCarty remembers nothing of being in the Jeep or in a cooled-down state in the hospital. What he does remember, however, is the cloud.

"The whole experience was very peaceful, very vivid," he says. "I just remember falling asleep on the cloud and white angels passing pink or red balls. I heard, 'Welcome, welcome.'"

Then he saw one of his brothers, Tennyson, who died six years ago.

"He grabbed me by the shoulder. He said, 'Somerset, this is your time. Enjoy your life. You have a lot to look forward to.' "

McCarty says the experience was incredibly moving.

"It was really great to be able to see him again. We were only one year and 16 days apart. To be able to experience his love and joy. It's a memory that will last forever," McCarty says.

'Nothing to be

scared of'

When he woke up in the hospital, McCarty was at first confused, thinking he was visiting someone there. But it soon became clear, he had suffered no residual effects from cardiac arrest. His brain and heart scans were normal, and he showed no cognitive or memory deficits.

He remained in the hospital while Doucet put a defibrillation device in his heart to shock it back into rhythm if another incident occurs.

A week after he left the hospital, he hiked up Flagstaff Mountain.

"To be clear, I didn't tell him he could do that," says Doucet, his doctor.

McCarty also resumed work. He owns a company that puts up holiday lights. In fact, Doucet hired him to put up his family's lights this season.

About a week and a half ago, McCarty for the first time looked at pictures of himself in the hospital that his brother, Chance, had taken, and it struck him forcefully what he had been through.

"It was really mind blowing. I was pretty much laying there dead," he says.

McCarty has met others who have been brought back from cardiac arrest, and they have some deficits after their ordeal. He feels lucky that he has no such problems.

"I feel more fluid and sharper than before," he says.

McCarty's brother, Tennyson, was a pastor, and three days before his brother died, McCarty rededicated his life to God. He believes his experience happened for a reason, and that he got a glimpse of heaven.

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